Replacing Lenovo Ideapad U450P internal hard drive

I needed to replace the internal hard drive of my Ideapad U450P but I could not find any repair manual or youtube clip on how to do this. It could be that this model is not as popular as others that someone hasn't bothered to do it. The official repair manual from Lenovo website doesn't include the hard drive as being one of the CRUs (Customer Replaceable Units). The only things that you can replace or remove directly on the base on the laptop are DIMM memory modules and Solid State Drive.

So, I decided that I will try to do it myself and the post the procedure here, so others may find it useful.

Firstly, turn over the laptop, take out the battery and remove all 17 screws on the base on the unit. This means:-

• 4 short screws along the front of the unit
• 8 long screws along the side and back of the unit (one of them holding the DVD-drive unit)
• 
• 2 long screws inside the battery, and
• 
• 3 short screws (which becomes visible after removing the DVD-drive).
• 

There's no need to take off the screws holding the 2 covers for memory and SSD module.

Once all those screws have been removed turn over the laptop and open up the lid. With the tip of your fingers, prise out the top part of the main unit along the edge where the battery normally sits.

 

Once the top has come off push the keyboard from underneath so it pops out.

Carefully pull the keyboard away from the main chassis and remove the keyboard connector by gently pulling out from its socket on the main board.

 

Once the keyboard is removed, you will see two more screws which sit underneath the keyboard and they need to be removed. 

 

You're almost there. Next comes the removal of the 4 connectors which are attached between the top part of the machine to the motherboard. Simply pull each one carefully from its socket and you will have removed the entire top part of the machine from the motherboard, giving you full access to the internal components.

    

    

As you will see, the hard drive (which is in-cased inside a metallic drive bay) is in the bottom left corner of the unit, and holding it together is a single screw on top right of the drive bay.

 

Once unscrewed, gently push the drive from the left-hand side my a few millimeters, so that it the latch is no longer behind a metal stopper from coming lose. Finally, gently pull out the drive by the plastic tab attached to the drive bay. 

    

    

This completes the demonstration on how to remove the internal drive of a Lenovo U450P laptop. The photo shows the internal drive in its drive bay (on the left) sitting next to a new identical drive which will take its place.